SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM)

Summary of HCM News From SAPPHIRE/ASUG-Part 2: Cloud

Brandon Toombs — Fri, 24 May 2013 11:48:36 GMT

In part one I talked about the changes coming to the Core HCM UI that were discussed at SAPPHIRE/ASUG. In this blog, I cover my impressions in the cloud space. If you want to hear more thoughts on this rapidly developing area, follow me on twitter @brandontoombs. The show is absolutely massive, so the below are just the data points that I was able to gather. At several points during the week I wanted to be 3 places at once!

From a "breaking" news perspective, there was less of it in this area than in core HCM. SuccessFactors has their own conference in October so anything Earth-shattering may be waiting until then Additionally, Lars Dalgaard, former SuccessFactors CEO/current head of SAP Cloud was unable to attend due to a family emergency. Lars is a brash force of nature on stage, so his absence was felt. Last year, Lars articulated had a clear vision last year around allowing customers to choose which portions of the cloud to adopt and at which pace. It would have been interesting to hear how this has been refined based on the past year. Regardless, Pepsi and Timken were featured in one of the keynotes where they explained their rationales for the making the move to EmployeeCentral. It will be interesting to hear their stories as they go live. From what I heard at the conferences several more large customers may be close to making this leap to EmployeeCentral as well.

Below are the highlights/impressions I took away:

The march toward the cloud for talent continues unabated. Customers I talked to seem to be embracing the SuccessFactors model for their talent platform. Perhaps more tellingly, a number of SAP HCM customers are replacing other cloud "best of breed" solutions (such as Taleo recruiting or Halogen performance) to implement a full SuccessFactors talent platform.
Major progress on Employee Central globalization, which now has localization for 51 countries, with payroll now available for 22 countries.
Recruiting Onboarding is now officially released. I saw a preview of this at HR2013 and was impressed at its use of social integration.
I heard more than one customer mention that the SuccessFactors license costs are being aggressively discounted. I believe that this is a great move to guarantee a critical mass of adoption of the product.
Not surprisingly given the number of licensing deals, there was a lot of interest from customers wanting to hear more about how the integration works between core SAP HCM to cloud SuccessFactors talent management. No major new news on this front at SAPPHIRE but SAP is executing nicely on already released commitments: integration connectors specific to employee data, compensation, and recruiting (new hires) have been delivered with more integrations on the way soon, including a requisition interface based on vacation positions.
Speaking of integration, 3 new SAP HCM/SuccessFactor Rapid Deployment Solution (RDS) packages were approved and announced: Epi-Use for cloud payroll, Hypercision for LMS integration, and Coeus for employee/recruiting/comp data migration and integration (full disclosure: I was part of the Coeus team.)
I heard multiple customers grousing about the 15 custom field maximum restriction on some of the interfaces into SuccessFactors. Hopefully the SuccessFactors developers will address this soon.
The big open question remains when HANA Cloud Integration will be publicly released to customers for SuccessFactors to SAP integration. HANA Cloud Integration for those of you don't know is SAP's "cloud-based middleware" that they are touting as the long-term integration solution for customers. This was originally supposed to be in place Q1 of 2013 (which has come and gone). I have not heard a new official date.
I did not hear much about progress towards multitenant payroll so I can only assume that this is still off in the distance. For the time being, SAP's strategy will continue to be Employee Central (which is true SAAS multitenant) with payroll being handled by a managed cloud single-instance payroll . Since SAP's payroll engine is universally regarded as the finest on-premise payroll in the industry, they can probably get by with this arrangement a while longer as long as they can hide any complications caused by the integration to the single-server "behind the curtain".

That wraps up my wrap-up. Overall it was an exciting and rewarding few days.

Recruiting Webcast with Expedia

Tammie Eldridge — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:13:20 GMT

Register for the Recruiting Webcast with Expedia on June 5, 2013.

Hear Jeremy Langhans, Talent Acquisition Manger at Expedia, share details about how they increased traffic to their career pages by 1,500% and attracted more than 150,000 visitors per month by using SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing. Participants will learn how they:

Exponentially increased career site traffic
Reduced hiring agency fees by more than $1 million
Made sharper decisions with advanced analytics
Closely aligned recruiting efforts with business goals

Registration link: http://bit.ly/10VV4u4

Not everything that counts can be counted

Laura Clements — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:03:32 GMT

There are never enough hours in the day, so I’m all for anything that frees me up to concentrate on the strategic stuff. But I was quite taken aback by the theme of SuccessFactors’ latest 20 Minute Masterclass: “Collecting HR metrics is a complete waste of time”. I tuned in, anticipating that I’d leap to defend all the KPIs we measure and monitor on a regular basis. But it turns out we’ve fallen into the same trap as many other companies.

We drew up our original list of indicators by canvassing all the various business functions, and it’s grown organically year on year. Every quarter, I send out a substantial PDF, packed with charts and graphs, that provides a retrospective view of our performance. I did a quick straw poll round the office and it appears that very few people have the stamina to read it all, let alone interpret it and make decisions based on its findings. So why are we bothering?

According to the webinar, we can get back on track by mapping out our organisational strategy on a single sheet of paper (yes, just one). Apparently, this helps to narrow the focus on what the board needs to know about our performance, rather than what we think might be interesting or simply a box-ticking exercise.

Another nugget of wisdom was that our annual Employee Engagement survey, at 32 questions long, needs to be torn up and replaced with just three questions. One quantitative – simply “to what extent would you recommend the company as an employer to your friends” – to create a kind of net promoter score, plus a couple of open-ended ones to tease out some useable insight. And rather than surveying everyone annually, we should be sampling 10% of our workforce on a rolling monthly basis.

Lastly, we need to simplify our presentation of the results back to the business. Metrics don’t tell a story by themselves – or reliably inform important decisions. So I’ll be lifting another tip from the webinar and taking a more journalistic approach: a headline that sums up the most critical issue, a strong visual, and a compelling narrative that focuses 20% on where we’ve been and 80% on where we need to go.

It might not take me any less time to compile than the chunky PDF I normally send out, but as Einstein says, not everything that counts can be counted. All I know is that when it comes to KPIs, less is often more valuable. It’s how relevant they are that matters.

Posting Balance Is Not Cleared (Off-Cycle Payroll Run B 0 12.05.2013 A) - UAE PAYROLL

KK SONU — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:56:55 GMT

Hi All,

While running tha payroll i am getting the error " Posting balance is not cleared (Off-Cycle Payroll Run B 0 12.05.2013 A)

All the GL A/c and Symbolic A/c are assigned properly. When i am trying to trouble shoot for one employee, some other employees are getting impacted.

One more thing if i fix this issue for one employee for the previous month payroll, i am getting the same issue for the same employee for the current month payroll.

the employees who are falling in this error category in previous month payroll run, they mayn't be fall in the same error category while running the current month payroll.

Pls provide some solution to fix this issue.

Advance Leave Payment Issues In UAE (Difference in Leave Salary with increment)

KK SONU — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:32:29 GMT

Hi All,

An Employee’s current salary is 1234 AED ()Payroll Period is 01.02.2013 To 28.02.2013)

He applied for a leave for vacation on 15^th February and he got the Advance Leave Payment of 1234 AED for March Month.

His vacation starts on 3^rd March and end on 27^th March

But on 26^th February he got an increment of 2345 AED.

While running the payroll for March month system is unable to calculate the difference amount.

Why is it so?

For this pls provide some solution.

Whether we need to do some configuration.

Kindly Help...........

HR2013 Amsterdam: A great opportunity for answers

Luke Marson — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:37:03 GMT

One of the best SAP HCM conferences of the year is nearly upon us in one of my favourite cities, Amsterdam. HR2013 Amsterdam promises to be an exciting and informative event and is a great opportunity to get answers to your questions, but also to find out what the latest information is on SAP HCM. There is a lot of confusion right now around on-premise, cloud, UI/UX, and mobile.

From my perspective, the biggest questions and clarity is needed around SuccessFactors integration. Although I know that the answers exist, this information is not feeding down to customers. Recently I’ve had two customers who didn’t know that the first integration package (iFlow) for SAP HCM and SuccessFactors could use SAP NetWeaver PI.

Customers are also confused about the position of on-premise versus Cloud, as well as about HR Renewal versus SuccessFactors. Sam Yen (via Jon Reed on this great blog about Fiori by Graham Robinson) recently specified the overall UX strategy of New, Renew, and Enable. However, this message is fairly new and as of yet hasn’t penetrated customers significantly.

In addition to learning about these topics, HR2013 is also a great opportunity to speak to fellow customers and to consultants about the latest topics and to get informal advice from experienced people who have gone through or are going through similar projects to you.

Top Sessions

There are plenty of demo sessions of SuccessFactors as well as sessions on SAP’s roadmap and strategy for both core HR and Cloud. If you need to know more then you have a number of great sessions to attend. For the pre-conference day on Monday 10^th June I would recommend all sessions. I think which ones you choose are down to which topics are of most interest to you.

Tuesday 10^th sees the conference “proper” start and prior to the kick-off is the keynote with David Ludlow, Group Vice President, Product Marketing, SAP Cloud and Jessica Kane, Vice President, Global Business Execution Architecture, SuccessFactors. Following this are several sessions that I recommend, in particular Jeremy Masters’ session at 12:15 that received a lot of plaudits when he delivered it at HR2013 Las Vegas. JB’s session at 10:45 will give you an overview of what enhancements are due in both on-premise and cloud, as well as clarify some questions around SAP’s strategy for HCM.

Time	Session
10:45 – 12:00	The 2013 guide to core SAP ERP HCM enhancements: On-premise and cloud by Jean-Bernard Rolland, SAP
10:45 – 12:00	Best practices for managing your global on-premise talent management implementation by Julius Opstrup, Gavdi Group
12:15 – 13:30	Guidelines and best practices for deploying ESS and MSS on mobile devices by Jeremy Masters, Worklogix
14:45 – 16:00	A detailed look at the new user experience for core SAP ERP HCM on-premise by Gertrud Beisel, SAP Labs

For Wednesday 11^th there are a number of interesting sessions, including two panel discussions:

Time	Session
09:00 – 10:15	Social and mobile innovations: Turning HR and talent management solutions into systems of engagement by Prashanth Padmanabhan, SAP
09:00 – 10:15	An introduction to the integration between SAP and SuccessFactors by Yannick Peterschmitt, SAP AG
10:45 – 12:00	Panel discussion: The future of SAP ERP HCM – Predictions from the experts moderated by Martin Gillet, Cogilius bvba
12:15 – 13:30	Panel discussion: Leading experts share insights for successfully integrating SAP and SuccessFactors moderated by Margit Bauer

Thursday 12^th sees the final day of the conference but there are still some great sessions to see:

Time	Session
09:00 – 10:15	Talent management as a driver of business strategy execution by Steve Hunt, SuccessFactors
10:45 – 12:00	Develop an effective succession planning process using SAP talent management functionality by Venki Krishnamoorthy
13:15 – 14:30	Proven change management strategies to ensure a successful transition to a global SAP ERP HCM platform by Sven Ringling, iProCon
14:45 – 16:00	How to prepare for a SuccessFactors implementation by Venki Krishnamoorthy

Ask The Experts

The Ask The Experts sessions give customers and consultants the possibility to ask their burning questions to SAP employees and SAP HCM experts. This year again sees a great list of experts to speak to, with plenty on offer in terms of SuccessFactors and Talent Management. On Tuesday 11th June you can speak to:

Speaker	Expertise
Venki Krishnamoorthy	Talent Management (SAP HCM and SuccessFactors) and SAP HCM/SuccessFactors integration
Luke Marson, Gavdi Group	SuccessFactors, SAP HCM/SuccessFactors integration, Talent Management, and Visualization Solutions by Nakisa
Demetris Demetriou, DeltaSoft	Payroll and time management, security and authorizations, and data management and integration
Jeremy Masters, WorkLogix	Compensation and Performance Management, Self-Services, and SuccessFactors
Mark Brandau, SuccessFactors	SuccessFactors, Performance Management, and Learning
Danielle Larocca, SpinifexIT	HCM Reporting, HR Configuration, and Managing Your Consultant
Sonja Van Sleeuwen, SuccessFactors	HR processes, Cloud systems, and SAP HCM/SuccessFactors integration
Julius Opstrup, Gavdi Group	Global HCM Implementations, SAP HCM Talent Management, Business / Management Consulting

On Wednesday 12^th June you can speak to:

Speaker	Expertise
Sylvia Chaudoir, deloitte	PA, OM and Integration, HR structures and process design, and Global HR transformation
Prashanth Padmanabhan, SAP	SAP HCM/SuccessFactors integration and SAP Jam
Manimala Kanagavel, DEloitte	Global Implementations, Organizational management, and Personnel administration
Jens Ejsing, SAP	SAP HCM mobility, SAP Payroll-on-HANA, and SAP HCM Co-innovation
Sven Ringling, iProCon	International rollout projects, Personnel cost planning, and HR authorisations
Hartmut Laser, SAP	Travel and expense management, Travel risk and compliance, and End-to-End travel management process
Yannick Peterschmitt, SAP	Travel and expense management, Travel risk and compliance, and End-to-End travel management process
Michael White, Exaserv	ESS/MSS and SAP Portal, Adobe Forms, and ABAP Development

Shameless Plug

I will be part of 3 sessions, two which I have already mentioned above. These are all interactive discussions as this is a format that I really enjoy and allows customers and consultants to drive the content of the session.

Date/Time	Session
Tuesday 16:15 – 17:30	Interactive discussion forum: SuccessFactors debunked: Lessons from the trenches
Wednesday 10:45 – 12:00	Panel discussion: The future of SAP ERP HCM – Predictions from the experts moderated by Martin Gillet, Cogilius bvba
Wednesday 12:15 – 13:30	Panel discussion: Leading experts share insights for successfully integrating SAP and SuccessFactors moderated by Margit Bauer

Summary

This conference, although not as good as its Stateside equivalent, is still the best SAP HCM conference in Europe and I highly recommend it for any customers or consultants who couldn’t make it to Las Vegas this year. There are always plenty of informative sessions and it is also an opportunity to ask your questions of true SAP HCM experts and SAP executives. It is also an opportunity to meet up with other SAP partners and vendors that you deal with.

Summary of HCM News From SAPPHIRE/ASUG-Part 1: OnPremise

Brandon Toombs — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:01:26 GMT

SAPPHIRENOW/ASUG is in the books for 2013. Having finally digested all of the pudding cups, fruit, and fluorescent margaritas, I think I'm now ready to make sense of the torrent of information I saw. There will be plenty of analysis discussing SAP as a whole, so for the most part my remarks will be limited to the HCM space. However I do want to comment that I came away with the sense that the morale of the SAP employees and partners I talked to was very strong. Much like team members all enjoying being part of a team that is on a winning streak. This is a marked contrast to 3-4 years ago when SAP seemed stuck in a rut living off its past glory. No more.

Due to the amount of information, I have decided to break the content into 2 blogs. Today, we'll cover OnPremise HCM and I'll post the Cloud (i.e., SuccessFactors) in the next few days.

On to the HR space...

Core HCM

Major initiatives are underway in SAP HCM on-premise. The SAP team has 150 developers hard at work making quarterly updates and the progress shows. As a side note, SAP acknowledged that one of the key drivers behind investing in the refresh of its core HCM UI was that it did not compare favorably when core HCM applications were integrated in portal environments with the talent management applications from SuccessFactors. Ironic that it took the acquisition of a cloud company to make SAP step up its game, but the massive install base for core HCMwill be a happy with the results whatever the impetus.
From an HCM Renewal standpoint, the "swim lane" landing page for HR Administrators that has wowed customers is in the process of being updated so that it can be used for ESS and MSS as well. The end-goal here is that this UI can be used regardless of what role you play in the organization and that users will be able to populate the lanes with whatever content they desire, including some social content. The new ESS/MSS content will be delivered in July in a quarterly feature pack. An under-reported benefit of the swim lane page is that it can render on smartforms/tablets, which means that SAP is delivering mobile-capable UI. However, given the size of the page, "mobile-capable" probably refers more to tablets than smartphones. Also of note is that customers will be able too build out their own additional swim lanes using Eclipse.
We learned that SAP is also developing full ESS/MSS mobile portals, with the prototype name of "Work Deck". There was no official timeframe for these. No word on if additional licensing costs are involved, but I suspect if they are following the same model of just creating mobile-enabled web pages as opposed to developing applications for specific devices, then the answer is probably 'no'. Of course, in order to access the mobile portal customers would need to decide how to either expose the web page to the internet or install VPN on devices.
In a big and somewhat surprising development, a new HTML5 org chart visualization is being created to replace the Nakisa-developed flash version currently in use in MSS for the HR Renewal home page. This will be delivered in July. The likely rationale behind the switch is that the flash UI does not render on mobile devices. The new org chart will be available within the swim lane UI and as a standalone application.
For the first time that I can recall we have interesting SAP Payroll user interface news! A new web-based payroll manager workbench is in the planning stages. It is being built to help payroll managers manage the entire payroll process from a web front end, with reports and alerts.
Also on the payroll front, one of the key areas that SAP is planning to use HANA for in HCM is payroll reconciliation. To do this, the payroll data is being "de-clustered" during post-processing to enable HANA to work its in-memory magic. The reconciliation processing time will be reduced from a few hours to a few minutes--making it more likely that your payroll administrators will make it home in time for dinner. The "de-clustering" is being rolled out country-by-country in order to ensure that the process is working properly. One side note: the core employee calculation process is not going to be altered to optimize for HANA as this presented too many risks.

That's it for now. To hear more, feel free to follow me on twitter @brandontoombs.

RebuildHR Manifesto- Part A

Manish Thakkar — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:30:06 GMT

I have implemented global SAP HR projects for almost 15 years. During this time, very little has changed with HR and SAP HR. There were some cosmetic changes (HR to HCM) and some incremental changes (seeing your manager's goals and setting your own goals for the year). I always felt some gap in HR/ HR systems as compared to consumer technology. For example: Why not email a photo, taken using a ubiquitous cell phone, of required document than faxing? How can the world of HR use the technological innovation? My tipping point came when I watched the movie 'Moneyball'.

'Moneyball' (the movie and the book) is about how Billy Beane, the General Manager of Oakland Athletics', rebuilt his baseball team on a lean budget using data analysis in selecting his players. He did not believe in the traditional scouting method. Nor did he believe in many of the player statistics as they did not correlate to their real performance. He used new player metrics (Sabermetrics) developed by Bill James that showed the true contribution and skills of the player. The results were astounding. Oakland Athletics created history in 2002 by winning 20 straight games, an accomplishment unheard of but what was fascinating is that his team had the lowest payroll. Boston Red Sox, understanding what Billy Beane had done, copied the approach. They went on to win the World Series in 2004 after a gap of 86 years!

US baseball's origin can be traced back to 18th century, and the 'World Series' started in 1903. Traditional scouting techniques seemed the only way to find baseball talent. Bill James saw the inherent flaws in this technique and started to write about it, but baseball insiders couldn't see it. Computers became available to do data analysis and crunch number and showed that Bill's assessment made sense, but still the insiders refused to see the facts objectively. Finally, Billy came and executed on new model using technology. Now, why are we discussing this and what does this have to do with HR or HR systems like SAP HR?

Introduced around 1995, Core SAP HR hasn't changed much. Since then, Steve Jobs came back to Apple and created iPhone. Mark Zuckerberg left college to create 'Facebook'. Jack Dorsey lead 'Twitter'. During this people-centered technological upheaval, SAP HR was just tweaked. I think most of the other systems are very similar and essentially execute the same HR processes, maybe slight differently. It seems that HR itself, as a function, has changed very little. Most data collected by HR drives administrative processes. Statistics and analytics that come from this data can not drive talent management or employee engagement. HR talks about building teams all the time, but how do you measure success of team building programs? How to measure what employees do differently if they become good team players? HR talks about employee engagement. How can it find out the degree of employee engagement? The lack of data and data models prevents HR from measuring key skills of the employees. But the same employees create an unbelievable amount of data when they leave the office. They tweet millions of messages every day post thousands of picture and posts on social media sites like Facebook. How can this phenomenon of creating and sharing data, willingly, be replicated for work, in the context of an office, a company ?

Big data, social media, cloud computing and mobile connectivity are going to help bring about HR transformation. HR has to rebuild itself from the bottom up. HR can analyze social data, provided by employees using their mobile devices, to improve personal productivity and lead the use of wearble computing which leads to higher company profits.

- Mobile devices enable employees to capture data easily and efficiently

- Mobile social apps help capture the relevant data

- BigData/ Analytics helps crunch and analyze this data (collected by crowdsourcing)

- Cloud computing makes this analysis/ feedback available anywhere, anytime

- Wearable computing (like Google Glass)

The dreams of HR visionaries can become reality as the technologies have converged. It's time for HR professionals to understand technology to see what moon shots are now possible. It's time for HR professionals to become the 'Billy Beane' of a company. They have to build new HR systems that captures more relevant data, engages employees, predicts true talent and directly impacts company's bottom-line. It's not a time for incremental changes, it's not a time for just a little transformation. It's time to rebuild HR from the ground up using all the technology we have. It's time for a new 'RebuildHR' Manifesto.

To be continued...

=========================================================================================

Acknowledgements:

Wikipedia, Billy Beane, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beane (as of May 13, 2013, 19:11 GMT).

Wikipedia, Bill James, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James (as of May 13, 2013, 19:14 GMT).

IMDB, Moneyball, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/ (as of May 13, 2013, 22:00 GMT).

Wikipedia, History of baseball in the United States, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_baseball_in_the_United_States (as of May 15, 2013, 02:45 GMT).

Special thanks to Martix Rexroad for his insight and feedback.

Working with ASPECTS (Customize / Enhance Tcode PP01)

T G — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:12:49 GMT

Summary

Aspect contains a code that represents an aspect. An aspect is a tool that allows you to filter out, or restrict, which infotypes you may define when working with an object. Using aspects is optional.

Aspects enable you to create and edit your data in the system from a certain point of view. This means you are able to control which plan versions, object types and infotypes are relevant, and thus offered for editing. The screen layout of the maintenance transactions depends on this allocation.

Example

Information (i.e. infotypes) of the aspect "job description" is not used in the aspect "Organizational development" and can therefore be excluded from the processing

Maintain Aspects

Maintain the system settings which are required for setting up aspects.

Define the required aspects.

You can create as many aspects as you like. There are no naming conventions for the aspect name.

Assign these aspects to your plan versions.
Assign object types and infotypes to the aspects.

SAP IMG: Personnel Management - Global Settings in Personnel Management - Dialog Control – Maintain Aspects

Fig.01: Display IMG-1

Go to new entries for Maintain Aspects

Fig.02: New Entries: Overview of Added Entries-1

Once maintained save the request, here in this case, ZTGA – ZTG Aspect is created

Maintain Plan Versions per Aspect

Plan Version contains a one or two alphanumeric key which differentiates between scenarios in the organizational plan. Organizational Management allows to manage scenarios in parallel in various plan versions.

SAP IMG: Personnel Management - Global Settings in Personnel Management - Dialog Control – Maintain Aspects

Select the Aspect created and choose the “Plan Versions per Aspects” in the Dialog Structure in the left-side

Fig.03: Change View: “Plan Versions per Aspect”: Overview

Go to new entries to Maintain Plan Version per Aspects

Fig.04: New Entries: Overview of Added Entries-2

Once maintained save the request, here in this case, ZTGA – ZTG Aspect is assigned to 01 – Current plan version

Object Types and Infotypes per Aspect

Object Type contains a one- or two-character code that represents different types of objects, for example, 'S' for position, 'Q' for qualification and 'E' for business event.

Infotype contains a code that represents a specific infotype. Infotypes allow you to describe object attributes.

Fig.05: New Entries: Overview of Added Entries-3

As shown in Fig.05, select the required Aspect to maintain respective object types and infotypes and double-click “Object Types and Infotypes per Aspect” in the Dialog structure from left-side.

It will open a screen shown as in Fig.06

Fig.06: Change View “Object Types and Infotypes per Aspect”: Overview

For new entries as shown in Table.01, Object Types and Infotypes are maintained for Aspect ZTGA – ZTG Aspect

Sno	Object Type	Infotypes per object
1	O – Organizational unit	1000 – Object 1001 – Relationships 1002 - Description
2	C – Job	1000 – Object 1002 – Description
3	S – Position	1000 – Object 1001 – Relationships

Table.01: List of Object Types and Infotypes per Aspect

Go to new entries to Maintain Object Types and Infotypes per Aspects.

Maintain entries as shown in Fig.07.

Fig.07: New Entries: Overview of Added Entries

Once maintained save the request.

Here it completes the configuration for Aspects.

Maintain User Profile Parameter

Once configuration completes system administrator should maintain user’s profile in parameter with ASP for Aspects.

Here in this case user profile maintain in parameter ASP as ZTGA.

Maintain required user profile as shown in Fig.08

Fig.08: Maintain User Profile

Here it completes maintenance of user profile for Aspects.

Go to Tcode PP01 to find the changes of Aspect ZTGA – ZTG Aspect

Access Tcode PP01

Fig.09: SAP Easy Access

Once the user whose profile is maintained with parameter ASP – ZTGA, enter into Tcode PP01, Object Type field will be listed with only those Infotypes for Object Types maintained in Aspect ZTGA – ZTG Aspect.

Users Access is restrict as per the Aspect, it is accessible for only those Object Types with respected infotypes per Object Type.

Example

As per the Aspect ZTGA – ZTG Aspect:

If Object Type O – Organizational unit is selected, then there are only three infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object, 1001 – Relationships and 1002 – Description.

If Object Type C - Job is selected, then there are only two infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object and 1002 – Description.

If Object Type S - Position is selected, then there are only two infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object and 1001 – Relationships.

Maintain Object Type O

Fig.10: Maintain Object-1

As shown in Fig.10 select Object Type O – Organizational unit

Fig.11: Maintain Object-2

As per the Aspect ZTGA - ZTG Aspect, once Object Type O – Organizational unit is select, then there are only three infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object, 1001 – Relationships and 1002 – Description.

User has no permission to maintain any other infotype for Object type selected.

Maintain Object Type C

Fig.12: Maintain Object-3

As per the Aspect ZTGA - ZTG Aspect, If Object Type C - Job is selected, then there are only two infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object and 1002 – Description.

Maintain Object Type S

Fig.13: Maintain Object-4

As per the Aspect ZTGA - ZTG Aspect, If Object Type S - Position is selected, then there are only two infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object and 1001 – Relationships.

Toggle between Aspects

It is possible to toggle between Aspects from Tcode PP01, follow Fig.14 and Fig.15 to select the required Aspect as per the requirement

Fig.14: Maintain Object-5

Fig.15: Select Aspect

To the cloud and beyond with SAP and my ASUG family

Sherryanne Meyer — Tue, 14 May 2013 04:13:24 GMT

I’m excited to see Seth Godin tomorrow when he speaks at the ASUG-SAPPHIRE keynote address. His book Poke the Box is a epithet for what I do each year at this annual conference: listen, examine, poke, prod, question, challenge and try to influence the shape of the technology I am now using or will be using in the next five to ten years.

Tomorrow, I will be speaking about my recent experiences inmaking an impact on the usability features of SAP HCM when I speak about Customer Validation of HCM Renewal 1.0,Feature Pack 3, which is now released by SAP for general availability.

This morning, I participated in the pre-conference,“SuccessFactors Employee Central, Cloud Payroll, and Integration to ERP”. Employee Central takes what is best out of SAP’s strengths in localization and globalization and applies it to the best usability features of SuccessFactors. There were a few features I was just itching to get my hands on. Take, for example, the ability for a manager to initiate a change in an employee without having to know about the object, Position.” He/she can execute the change simply by providing the necessary information. There is no need for the manager to know there is a position in the background. This is genius. We have long struggled with how to educate managers on the importance of the Position and what that data element means – both separate from the employee record and in relationship to the employee record.

Yet, many tquestions remain n my mind about SAP HCM on premise and SAP SuccessFactors (HCM cloud). At the moment, the "full cloud" HCM deployment appears to be a cornucopia of SAP, EC and partner solutions. Flash back to a time when we had multiple vendors and separate and disparate systems that did not talk to each other in a synchronous language or real time. We in the HCM Community have often joked, "The good thing about SAP is that it's fully integrated. The bad thing about SAP is that it is fully integrated." What if we got what we asked for -- that is, less integration -- and really did not want that to begin with?

Moreover - what intrigues me about the cloud versus on premise model is this: Is the cloud model merely prettier than what we're used to seeing in on-premise? What's the value equation? I heard enough confused attendees at this morning's pre-conference to know that the attraction is the UI of SuccessFactors. But - what if your on-premise solution could have the same or similar UI? And I do believe that's possible with EhP6, HCM Renewal 1.0, Feature Pack 3. Trouble is - no one is selling that as hard as SuccessFactors software; so, sometimes it's a little bit harder for customers to sift thru the muck to find what is actually best for their own company: full cloud, full on-premise or hybrid?

It's a complicated puzzle to solve. None of us have all the answers. But, I'm confident that together, in our community of HCM users, we will ask the right questions, challenge the status quo, and generally influence the future course that SAP/SuccessFactors charts. In the meantime, I plan to use the next four days to soak up information, reconnect with colleagues and friends, and generally come away with more ways to "poke the box" with SAP.

Assignment of time wage type with Attendance type

vijaya Bharathi — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:40:36 GMT

Hi,

I have maintained X no. of hours in one attendance type, after running the time evaluation those X no. of hours should process in a time wage type. Can any one of you tell me where can we assign the time wage type to attendance type.

Regards

Bharathi

SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics or SAP Business Intelligence for Human Resources?

Kouros Behzad — Fri, 10 May 2013 22:33:28 GMT

“My IT team has deployed SAP BI which is providing extensive reporting across our organization. However, I am also looking for an application that is designed for my HR team. Am I running the risk of paying twice for the same tools?”

I regularly get questions on how SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics (WFA) and SAP Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, specifically SAP BusinessObjects BI for Reporting and Analytics are related or different in the context of human resources (HR). I want to take this opportunity to explain: why traditional BI is not enough, the analytics value chain, how SAP BI solutions and SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics align along the analytics value chain, how they can be compared and contrasted, and how you can use them together to your advantage.

So, Why Is Your HR Organization Struggling?

Like many large enterprise organizations, your company has probably made investments in enterprise business intelligence tools. This could be SAP BusinessObjects BI, IBM Cognos, Oracle BI, or other. Yet, many such HR organizations don’t get full benefits from the reporting and analytics capabilities of the BI tools being used elsewhere in the organization.

There are some typical barriers that inhibit HR’s ability to effectively deploy enterprise BI tools. Some common workforce analytics and planning challenges cited by HR leaders are:

“Our data is all over the place – we use a Band-Aid to patch together systems”
“It takes 3 weeks to produce our workforce dashboard – it gets sent out and we start all over again”
“We want our analysts to be analysts, not building pivot tables or creating VLOOKUPs”
“We need to be better at telling the story – that starts with credible data and metrics”

In addition, when HR leaders need workforce analytics, reports or calculations, they have to wait behind the Finance, Operations, and Sales departments.

How much of your analyst or HR business partners’ time is spent taking manual “data dumps” from your disparate HR and talent systems into Excel, then cleaning the data and putting into PowerPoint? How does this compare with amount of time spent analyzing the results and telling a compelling story? One goal of analytics tools should be to get the most out of people’s time, energy, and talents by shifting the percentage of time spent from data assembly and transformation work to higher value-add functions like interpreting information to improve data-driven decision support:

Not All Challenges Are Technical in Nature

Finance, sales and marketing typically have clear standards for measuring and managing their business functions. In HR, we frequently encounter less consistent metric definitions and fewer standards than are used elsewhere in the organization. Often, HR struggles to identify key performance indicators (KPI) to measure things that matter, and it ends up tracking metrics that don’t necessarily measure business outcomes. This results from a lack of analytics mindset (see Analytics - from the World of Finance to the HR Organization) in the HR organization — but this is changing and HR is seeing the impact and the value very rapidly.

Once they do, the challenge becomes building in-house analytic skills and capabilities in the HR organization. Frustration with current technologies and processes often spurs the need for a best-of-breed approach to workforce analytics and planning.

Traditional BI is Not Enough

The product rationale behind SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics is that traditional BI is not enough to unlock full value from people-data. BI technology alone isn’t enough to help determine:

Which data to analyze?
How to get/integrate it?
How to analyze it (metrics)?
How to interpret it?
How to react?

Along the Analytics Value Chain

I attended a great presentation by Brian Ong, people analytics manager at Google, at the 2012 Human Capital Institute (HCI) Workforce Planning and Analytics Conference on Case Studies by the Google People Analytics Team. During this presentation, Brian presented a very simple view of the Analytics Value Chain:

I will use this depiction to position WFA and SAP business warehouse and BI solutions relative to how well they deliver on this analytics value chain out-of-the-box.

Functionality of Key BI Tools for HR

BI tools don’t need much introduction. They are, according to Wikipedia, “generally designed to retrieve, analyze and report data. The tools read data that have been previously stored, often, though not necessarily, in a data warehouse or data mart.” BI helps “transform raw data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes.”

Two important things to point out in these statements: 1) BI tools are generally designed, and 2) the tools by themselves are not smart enough to transform data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes without intervention from resources with expertise.

SAP is positioned as a leader in 2013 Gartner Business Intelligence and Analytics Magic Quadrant and I cannot do justice in this blog to cover even a fraction of its capabilities and benefits it can provide. Organizations with a strong analytics mindset can utilize the power of BI tools to drive advantage. However, BI tools are not specific to HR, which puts the HR department behind the curve relative to other departments whose needs are better supported.

Data: HR departments, with the help of IT, can choose to build their own data warehouse or they can deploy a standard business warehouse, such as SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) or third party warehouse, as the foundation for the data model and then extend this to meet their needs. If leveraging SAP NetWeaver BW, integrations to SAP for HR and SuccessFactors for Talent Management are available.
Metrics: HR departments are typically left on their own, or can solicit help from consultants, to identify KPIs that are important to its organizations. Once identified, they need to get agreement from all stakeholders on the definitions of these metrics, and then use IT resources to build and roll out the metrics. To get a jump start, SAP has made available a rapid deployment solution for Executive HR Reporting, which delivers a foundation for visualization leveraging SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and including over 40 KPIs across HR and talent management processes.
Analysis: The SAP BI solutions provide various tools to enable the analysis process. SAP has released a framework for HR analysis via a rapid-deploymentsolution for Advanced HR Analysis based on SAP BusinessObjects Analysis edition for OLAP to enable HR analysts and HR Business Partners to explore and assess data visually, drill down to identify the root causes, answer questions, and validate hunches quickly. This solution contains predefined content around headcount, mobility and cost, recruitment, and talent management.
Viewers of workforce data are left to their own devices to interpret the information they see and draw their own Insights and determine suitable Actions.

Functionality of SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics for HR

With SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, HR and business leaders can take advantage of a solution that specifically provides the strategic and tactical insights derived from workforce analytics without having to become data or IT specialists, or having to impart deep HR experience to their IT teams who support the BI environment. So what does this mean and how is it different from BI?

WFA comes delivered with libraries of predefined content relevant to HR:

Data: WFA provides target maps and integrations to bring in raw data into its warehouse in the cloud from any HR and talent management system, whether from the cloud or on-premise. It can further take in data from other systems including sales, financials, and even external surveys providers.

Behind the scenes, the WFA transformation engine manages exceptions, fills in logical gaps, and handles organization changes to elevate the quality and credibility of the data that is later used in analysis. The broad experience in integrating with large enterprise HR systems including SAP, PeopleSoft, and others helps to bring the application up and running in as little as 100 days.
Metrics: WFA comes delivered with a library of roughly 2000 predefined metrics focused on topics such as: workforce demographics and diversity, movement into and out of organizations – internal and external, absence management, career and development planning, compensation planning, employee relations, financial, goals management, health and safety, HR service delivery, learning management, leave accrual, payroll and benefits, performance management, recruitment, succession management, and surveys.

Every measure and metric in WFA is comes with a clear definition, formula for how it is calculated, and its purpose to ensure a standard and mutual understanding across all users, as shown in the screenshot above. Each metric definition is complemented with a list of related measures that can assist in providing a more comprehensive view of the situation, and prompt logical next steps for analysis. This knowledgebase reflects more than 600 person-years of practical and field experience spanning all regions and industries, enabling HR practitioners to learn experientially by simply using the solution.
Analysis: WFA provides multiple ways of delivering guided analysis of your workforce to help you discover what questions to ask, find out why they matter, and get answers. One is Issue Focused Series, where WFA brings together related metrics and focus on very specific issues that are of high interest to organizations. Examples of issues include Aging Workforce, Diversity & Inclusion, Low Tenure Terminations, Internal Mobility, and Workforce Generations. Another example is Critical Human Capital Questions, where WFA uses question-driven analytics to help answer common and critical human capital questions across HR and talent management topics, with capability to drill down to understand the root cause of trends, hotspots, or inefficiencies. Sample questions include “Do we have a pay-for-performance culture?” or “Are we building a high performance workforce?”
Insight: Most HR and IT organizations face complexity in assembling and communicating insight. Managers are time poor and need advice, not more data.BI-based analytics often prompt follow-on questions that are hard to address in a timely manner. With its latest feature, Headlines, WFA continually mines HR and talent data across the organization and behind the scenes, finds pain points and hot spots that matter to each manager, and presents custom alerts to individual managers in common language, to highlight specific areas of concern. This is a very different tact from pushing dashboards, however sophisticated, and leaving the audience to its own device to read and interpret the charts and graphs.

Headlines takes this further to describe what could be contributing to the condition, other related items that should be given consideration, recommendations on how to address the situation, as well as predictive analytics to identify who else may be at risk. Headlines (video) is clearly a differentiator from typical BI tools as it helps managers understand the situation as it is happening, pre-empts questions, provides advice and guidance, and focuses and facilitates dialog to address issues.

WFA also enables you to benchmark yourself against your peers to identify gaps, build business cases, and take action. Benchmarks are available across metrics and topic areas for all users of the application, and can provide comparisons within your organization, as well as to others using the WFA solution. This is typically a service that is only offered by third party providers.
Action: Where relevant, WFA provides recommendations for action from the best practice “strategy bank,” which is based on years of field research and domain expertise. WFA also provides quick links and actions where it makes sense from employee-level detail to navigate directly to relevant areas in the SuccessFactors suite to take action.

Comparison of SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics with SAP BI Solutions

There are other ways of comparing and contrasting the solutions as outlined below:

SAP Business Intelligence	SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics
Multi-purpose business intelligence tool set which can cover HR and other needs, but all content needs to be built out from scratch	Purpose-built application delivering deep and broad embedded content to address HR analytics requirements specifically
Deployed on-premise	Deployed from the cloud
One unified and complete BI suite addressing the full spectrum of BI needs across the enterprise	Solution optimized for decisions involving human capital, designed to enhance HR’s role as advisor to the business
Comprised of advanced business intelligence and analytics tools ranging from Extract-Transform-Load (ETL), query and reporting, dashboards, exploration and discovery, and predictive	Has embedded tools for query and reporting, dashboards, exploration and discovery, and basic predictive
Very flexible and powerful in terms of how the tools are configured and deployed by IT for use throughout the organization	Flexibility to rapidly enable HR and line of business users to define and perform own human capital-related metrics and analytics
Data source agnostic; can connect to any transaction or warehouse	Cloud-based specialty data warehouse optimized for human capital-related data sources and metrics
Once your data is loaded into business warehouse or connection is made to the data source, the work just begins for building queries, metrics, dashboards, and analysis using the appropriate BI tool	Once data is loaded, the application is ready to use and draw value from immediately
Requires IT resources with knowledge of technology and data models to support HR in generating reports and output	Intuitive and designed for the HR professional and line of business users
Primarily helps IT resources and selected HR power-users up-skill and learn new technologies	Helps users from HR and line of business up-skill and learn how to apply analytics for better decisions

How SAP BusinessObjects BI Solutions and SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics Work Together

Now that we’ve talked about how they’re different, let’s briefly talk about how WFA fits together with other analytic solutions:

In a side-by-side deployment, you can extend utilization of HR metrics from SuccessFactors WFA by allowing consolidation with cross enterprise reporting, to be presented via enterprise scorecards and dashboards to increases visibility into workforce trends, risks, and opportunities.

This can help accelerate the correlation and analysis of workforce characteristics against data from other parts of enterprise, and gain insights into how investments in talent are impacting business outcomes.

When talking about SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, note the emphasis and attention on HR and content delivered out-of-the-box, as opposed to technology talk. While many of the WFA capabilities can be replicated on top of an enterprise BI platform, doing so comes with a very long implementation timeframe and at a very high cost.

So, in answer to the question, “WFA or BI?”, I say— SAP BusinessObjects BI Solutions and SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics.

Professional Tax - Maharashtra & Form16-Summary of Payslip

Govardhan Reddy — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:40:29 GMT

Professional Tax - Maharashtra

& Form16-Summary of Payslip

Component Version: SAP ECC 6.0 Release: 604 Level: 0046 Highest Support Pack level: SAPKE60460

Dear Gurus,

This document comprises the steps for configuring the Professional Tax for Maharashtra. Unlike the other states Maharashtra professional tax will be calculated in a specific manner.

The PTax Slab rates for pertaining Maharashtra are as follows.

Slab Code	SRNo	Slab Range	PTax Amount	Currency
MH03	1	5,000.00	0	INR
MH03	2	5001-10000	175	INR
MH03	3	10001-999999	200	INR
MH04	1	5,000.00	0	INR
MH04	2	5001-10000	175	INR
MH04	3	10001-999999	300.00	INR

In the context of the years 2012-2013 & 2013-2014, the Maharashtra PTax calculation for employees with Income above Rs.10, 001/- will be as follows.

Instead of calculating 2500/12=208.333 it should be calculated as follows

200*11=2200(April-2012 to Jan2013 and March2013) (For Eleven months 200)

300*1=300(February2013) (Eleventh Month of 2012-2013)

Total: 2500 (12 Months)

_________________________________________________________________________

To make this calculation so, it is required to configure the below steps

Step1: SPRO->IMG->Payroll->Payroll India->Professional Tax->Define Professional Tax Grouping Details

Table: V_T7INP1

In this step, we define the personnel area and subarea groupings for Professional Tax (PTax) which are used to group all personnel areas and subareas that contribute to the same professional tax circle. In the below mentioned table enter the PTax Grouping no mention the End Date as 31.12.999 Start Date as 01.04.2012(Any Other effective Date).

1. Enter an alphanumeric value for the group name in the PtGrp field.

2. Select a state in the Region field.

3. Enter the zone number valid for the state of Maharashtra in the Zone No. field.

4. Enter the zone number valid for the state of Maharashtra in the Div. No. field.

5. Enter the registration certificate number in the Regn. Cert field.

6. Enter the professional tax office circle name in the Circ. Name field.

7. Enter the professional tax office circle number in the Off.CircNo field.

8. Enter the address of the tax office circle by clicking on the address button on the toolbar.

9. Save the entries.

PS grouping for Ptax

End Date

Ptax grp

desn

Region

Zone number

Division number

Address number

Regn Certificate no

Office circle name

Ptax circle no

Start Date

31-12-9999

Mumbai Region

24476

RGCRT0709

Mumbai Mahanagar Nigham

40527

1.01.01.1800

1234

01.01.1800

Step2: SPRO->IMG->Payroll->Payroll India->Professional Tax->Assign PTax Groupings for Personnel Areas and Subareas

Table: V_7IN0P_PTX

In this step, we assign professional tax groupings created in the previous step to personnel areas and subareas.Activities

1. Enter a personnel area in the Pers.area field.
2. Enter a personnel subarea in the P.subarea field.
3. Enter a personnel area and subarea grouping for Professional tax that is to be associated in the PS grp.Ptax field.
4. Save wer entries.

In this step PS Grouping for Ptax -29 which is defined the previous has to be assigned to the respective personal area.

Personnel area	Personnel subarea	Personnel Area Text	Pers. subarea text	PS grouping for Ptax
1234	2345	Maharashtra	Mumbai	06

Step3: SPRO->IMG->Payroll->Payroll India->Professional Tax->Assign Amounts for Professional Tax Deduction

Table: V_T7INP4

In this activity, we assign a Professional Tax (PTax) rate to a slab code. Slabs are salary brackets as specified for a State by the respective State Government or local authority.To assign rates to slab codes for a state MP, we must first define the slab code and then assign serial numbers, maximum limits and the rates.

Example

Slab Code	SRNo	Slab Range	PTax Amount	Currency
MH03	1	5,000.00	0	INR
MH03	2	5001-10000	175	INR
MH03	3	10001-999999	200	INR
MH04	1	5,000.00	0	INR
MH04	2	5001-10000	175	INR
MH04	3	10001-999999	300.00	INR

Step4: SPRO->IMG->Payroll->Payroll India->Professional Tax-> Maintain Method and Form Layout for PTax Groupings

Table: V_T7INP3

In this activity, we assign the calculation method used for a slab code in a region and specify the layout of the form to be submitted.

Select the state in the Region field.

Region	Slab Code	Method	Form Layout	Basis Type	+	Start Date	End Date
13	MH03	40PTXCMH	40PTXFMH	D Due Basis	G Gross Carry Forward	01.01.2012	31.01.2012
13	MH04	40PTXCMH	40PTXFMH	D Due Basis	G Gross Carry Forward	01.02.2012	29.02.2012
13	MH03	40PTXCMH	40PTXFMH	D Due Basis	G Gross Carry Forward	01.03.2012	31.01.2013
13	MH04	40PTXCMH	40PTXFMH	D Due Basis	G Gross Carry Forward	01.02.2013	28.02.2013
13	MH03	40PTXCMH	40PTXFMH	D Due Basis	G Gross Carry Forward	01.03.2013	31.01.2014
13	MH04	40PTXCMH	40PTXFMH	D Due Basis	G Gross Carry Forward	01.02.2014	28.02.2014
13	MH03	40PTXCMH	40PTXFMH	D Due Basis	G Gross Carry Forward	01.03.2014	31.01.2015
13	MH04	40PTXCMH	40PTXFMH	D Due Basis	G Gross Carry Forward	01.02.2015	28.02.2015

1 Enter the professional tax slab code name in the Slab code field.

2. Enter the method or function name for PTax calculations in the Method field.

3. Enter the time dependent key entry in T596F table to indicate the layout in the Form layout field.

4. Enter the start and end dates for the period.

5. Save the entries.Maintaining the Master DataIt is required to maintain the infotype 0588 Other Statutory Deductions (Subtype 0003).

Step6: Process the PayrollUnder the Deduction side, we could see the PTax deducted for that employee as 200 for the months of April-12, May-12......till January-13.For the month of February-2013 the PTax is calculated as 300.

January-2013

February: 2013

Form16-Summary of Payslip

Form16 –Summary –February2013

/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/102-41225-2-214558/February+2013.jpgFor the March-2013 month the PTax will be calculated as follows.

/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/102-41225-2-214560/March2013.jpgForm16 –Summary –March 2013 In the month of February 2013 the PTax will calculated as 300.However in the Form16 Summary of the Payslip the aggregate amount of Professional Tax for the entire year will be reflected as 2600 instead of 2500. In the month of March 2013 the PTax will calculated as 200.In the Form16 Summary of the Payslip the aggregate amount of Professional Tax for the entire year will be reflected back as as 2500 instead which is correct..

Related Notes: The related SAP Notes for Maharashtra PTax

1727550

HINCPTX0:Slab range not visible on PTax form for Maharasthra

Bibliography: Related Links:

Sincerely

Govardhan Reddy

SAP HCM Consultant

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer: This document does not contain the copyrighted content or material own by others. The coding or technical names used in the configuration screen shots are purely set as just examples and doesn't belongs to the real time systems or material own by others. Any resemblance with the real time system or material own by others is s just a coincidence. The numbering, wording, coding are provided in screen shots are to give better understandings to the forum users. I am fully abide by the rules and regulations of the forum. The prime motive is to serve the forum users better.

Countdown to HR(2013) Amsterdam

Venki Krishnamoorthy — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:00:05 GMT

This year, I will not be attending ASUG but will be attending the HR2013 conference in Amsterdam. The Amsterdam conference is scheduled from Jun 10th (Monday) - Jun 13th (Thu).

On Jun 10 th, the following pre-conference sessions are scheduled:

A detailed guide for leveraging SAP functionality for employee self-service (ESS) and manager self-service by Martin Gillet (Cogilius bvba)
An introduction to SuccessFactors solutions for HR and their integration with SAP ERP HCM by Sonja Van Sleeuwen,(SuccessFactors) and Margit Bauer, SAP
An independent expert’s guide to talent management: Deployment and integration, on-premise and cloud by Jeremy Masters (Worklogix)
The 2013 complete guide to the functionality, updates, and future roadmap for SAP ERP HCM solutions by Jean-Bernard Rolland, SAP

All four sessions are a great educational opportunity and we can expect to learn something new.

At the Amsterdam conference, I am scheduled to deliver four sessions:

Guidelines and best practices for creating a world-class appraisal application -- scheduled on Jun 11th , 10.45 AM
A how-to guide for implementing SAP E-Recruiting globally -- scheduled on Jun 12th , 12.15 PM
Develop an effective succession planning process using SAP talent management functionality -- scheduled on Jun 13th 10.45 AM
How to prepare for a SuccessFactors implementation -- scheduled on Jun 13th, 2.45 PM

If you are planning to implement Successfactors , I suggest you attend my session "How to prepare for a Sucessfactors implementation". In the session, I will walk you through , on what Successfactors offers, how to prepare for a Successfactors implementation, what to watch out for during the implementation, and how you can leverage your current on-premise assets.

A new Successfactors customer after reviewing the HR 2013 (Amsterdam) agenda, reached out to me few days back, trying to understand if the inputs provided by their SI is accurate. The customer appeard to be very frustrated with the SI,and we (customer and I) have been exchanging e-mails on how to prepare for the Successfactors implementation, as well what questions you as a customer need to ask your SI.

If you are attending the Amsterdam conference, do plan to attend my sessions. If you have not decided yet, I strongly urge you consider attending the conference. You can get more details about the conference by clicking on this link http://bit.ly/16Y9eBV

I shall write another post, in a few weeks, where I shall list the sessions that I plan to attend.

Amy Thistle (conference producer) and her team do a truly outstanding job in putting together these conferences - there is something for everyone. If you enjoy socializing with your peers, meet other customers, there is a socializing event every evening in the exhibition floor. Do not forget to pack sufficient number of business cards. Even in this age of LinkedIn's, a business card still carries its value.

I look forward to seeing you at the HR2013 Amstedam conference : http://bit.ly/16Y9eBV

With the advent of cloud computing, what's the future of SAP HCM consultants? Part 3 (Final)

Manish Thakkar — Tue, 07 May 2013 21:39:59 GMT

I have talked to many SAP HCM consultants. Most of them are aware of the changes and confused. SAP has always been about integration but now we hear about hybrid solutions. For example: store the core employee data in SAP HCM and interface with SuccessFactors' functionality of on-boarding, talent management, compensation management. Some companies integrate SAP finance, production planning, material management, human resources and other functions but what will be the impact of hybrid HR solution. There are many thoughtful questions but few good answers as things are still evolving. Cloud computing is a disrupting technology and has changed HR solutions and in turn the SAP HCM consulting. The consultants need to keep calm, carry on with their current work and understand the new normal proactively

Networking - LinkedIn.com provides a good way to stay connected to your contacts. Your connections can offer insight and information that can help you. You can also reciprocate the same.
Learning - Twitter.com, Facebook.com, SAP.com and other sites have a lot of information. You can follow industry experts and companies to learn about the trends as well as new detailed information.
Certification - Certification is not always required but it can come in handy. Though it might not always be obvious how useful they might be, there is definitely no harm in getting certified.

SAP HCM Consultants (Functional)

The good news is that there are many transferable skills.

Leadership, Team work and communication These skills are transferable.
Project management This is also transferable with some knowledge of the new system that you are implementing.
- You can supersize it by getting certified. PMP certification (www.pmi.org/certification)
Documentation and testing These skills are transferable though a little system knowledge might be helpful.
Business analysis - This skill is transferable. Cloud solution also requires HR processes analysis and requirements gathering.
- You can supersize it by getting certified. HR certification (www.shrm.org/certification) or Business Analysis certification (www.iiba.org/certification)
Gap analysis and configuration - This requires the knowledge of the new system. Understanding the cloud based solution is the key. If you plan to switch to the cloud, then you should take up some training or be a part of a cloud project. There are no courses available to public and training is only provided to the vendors/ system integrators.
- You can learn more by following people and companies on twitter/ LinkedIn. I have a twitter list that might help to get you started http://twitter.com/manishcom/hrtech-sap-sf-workday

SAP HCM Consultants (Technical)

There are specific challenges to this role as the cloud solution grows but it provides big opportunities. There will be a lot of work in transition and upgrade projects. But as more and more technical work is outsourced, technical consultants might need to add skills (though this might be a boon to technical consultant where the outsource work is going).

Leadership, Team work and communication These skills are transferable.
Project management This is also transferable with some knowledge of the new system that you are implementing.
- You can supersize it by getting certified. PMP certification (www.pmi.org/certification)
Documentation and testing These skills are transferable though a little system knowledge might be helpful.
Development (Programming): Though the basic programming concepts might be transferable, the detailed coding will not. ABAP programming is SAP's proprietary language.
- You can move to other SAP module if you would like to continue within SAP environment
- You can also pursue other upcoming SAP technologies like SAP Mobility and SAP HANA.
- You can move to cloud solutions and learn the new system by getting trained or being part of a cloud project. There are no courses available to public and training is only provided to the vendors/ system integrators
- You can learn more by following people and companies on twitter/ LinkedIn. I have a twitter list that might help to get your started http://twitter.com/manishcom/hrtech-sap-sf-workday

If you have any feedback, please feel free to give your comments here or email manish.thakkar@adept-consultancy.com. I wish you all the best.